CD Review: 'Death Magnetic' by Metallica

By the time Metallica appeared in the 2004 group-therapy movie "Some Kind of Monster," the band had all but abdicated the heavy-metal throne it had seized in the '80s through brute force and intense musicality.

It was the latest, lowest stop on the band's downhill slide in the years since releasing its masterly self-titled effort, known as the Black Album, in 1991. A trio of ever-lamer releases followed: "Load" in 1996, "ReLoad" in 1997 and "St. Anger" in 2003, each of which seemed to show a band increasingly struggling with its own identity.

"Some Kind of Monster" proved it. As the musicians squabbled on-screen, their uncertainty, ambivalence and latent fear about their musical direction were fast-flowing undercurrents, and the sessions with their self-aggrandizing, self-styled therapist uncovered a host of issues everyone should have probably addressed without cameras in the room.

Now, four years later, it's clear Metallica didn't need a life coach to help recapture the band's creative drive. Metallica needed Rick Rubin.

The bearded Buddhist producer took a characteristically Zen approach,
instructing James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich to put aside
all the emotional and musical baggage and think about how they would
follow up their genre-defining 1986 album "Master of Puppets."

They responded with "Death Magnetic" (Warner Bros.), the best Metallica album since "Metallica."

There's none of the droning nu-metal navel-gazing the band fell victim
to in the '90s, just speedy, savage riffs on sprawling metal-odyssey
tunes that sound fierce, urgent and inspired.

It gets better: After avoiding guitar solos on "St. Anger," the band
unleashes Hammett, who takes off like a junkyard dog that just broke
free of his chain. His dizzying lead lines twist and spin through the
songs, each a melodic cyclone carving an indelible path through the
churning fury of Ulrich's drums and steadily thrumming low end from
bassist Robert Trujillo, who makes his recorded debut with the band
here.

Hetfield sings tunefully on the power ballad "The Day That Never
Comes," but he's at his best when he's barking out lyrics in terse
bursts on "Broken, Beat & Scarred," a song that blazes through a
pulverizing riff, symphonic unison-guitar licks over roiling
double-bass drums and a jittery, heavy bridge section that erupts into
one of Hammett's most ferocious solos.

Not everything on "Death Magnetic" is a throwback to Metallica's '80s
heyday -- there are blasts of wah-wah guitar at the start of "Cyanide,"
subdued piano, strings and horns on "Unforgiven III" and a greasy bass
lick that opens "All Nightmare Long" before giving way to a jittery,
hyper-caffeinated jag of chugging guitar. For every newfangled touch,
though, there are more than a few reminders of old-school Metallica, be
it the surprisingly serene classical-metal guitar solo on "Suicide
& Redemption" or the way the guitars, bass and drums fall into
stuttering lock-step on "That Was Just Your Life."

It was a life in exile for Metallica over the past dozen years, until
the band finally realized its exile was self-imposed and came roaring
back to re-claim its rightful place atop the heavy metal heap.